Chapter 7

John Hammond walked past Harvey’s desk and gestured for him to follow. They headed for Gerald Small’s office where they found him deep in conversation with the contractor.

“Gerald, what’s the latest?”  Hammond asked.

“Alan here has been through the site with me and confirms that there are no booby traps.  However, the results aren’t counted here.  When Gray clicks a button, the website speaks to the South African web service and it sends back the two counts.”

“That’s right,” the contractor said, “Gray told me that he had commissioned other software in Joburg and all I had to do was send the IP addresses to his email address when the site first kicked off, and get the votes from this web service.”

“Would it be possible to alter this code to change the results in our favour?”  Hammond asked Small.

“Sure, that would only take one line of code.  However, he gave us easy access to this code, knowing that we would be able to alter it.  My guess is that he has other software and this website is just to test us, to see if we interfere with it.  I doubt that he is relying on the results this website will display.”

Hammond thanked the contractor for his time and asked one of the techies to show him out, then asked Small about the other software.

“That,” Small said, “remains a mystery.  We got in touch with the company he paid the fifty grand to, but they were simply instructed to source a developer and pass the details on to Gray.  They did just that and got five grand for their trouble.  We tried contacting the guy they commissioned but there was no reply, so we tried the airlines and he boarded a plane for Manila two days ago, due to return in three weeks time. The ticket was purchased last week.”

“Which means we have no idea what traps he has in place for us?”  Harvey guessed.

“Exactly.”  Small confirmed.  “We’re blind.  Once the emails get to his inbox we have no idea what he is doing with them.”

“Then we go with the first choice,” Hammond said.  “Intercept the emails before he gets them and change the odds in our favour.  Do it now, we have less than an hour before voting closes.”

Small had everything prepared and with a few keystrokes he announced it done.  “Every second and third email with ‘Die’ in the body will now be changed to ‘Live’,” he announced.

“Why second and third?”  Harvey asked.

“If we only do the second,” Small explained, “the first and second votes will simply cancel each other out and we will be relying on people to send in freedom votes.  This way, for every three death votes we turn them into one net freedom vote.  If he is watching the figures in real time he will still see death votes coming in, but there will be a surge in freedom votes.  He will hopefully put it down to the mother’s plea.”